About Integral Life Designs, LLC

My Vision is a world in which humans live in harmony with the universe as mindful, integrated beings.

My Mission is to assist human beings in their use of the inherent difficulties in business, career and everyday life as mindfulness practice to lead their process of awareness, growth and integration.

I acknowledge that human beings innately embody capacity for integration: intellectual mastery balanced with emotional and somatic intelligence, relational and spiritual competence.  Yet the path of integration is constricted or stunted when human beings live unconsciously, compartmentalize and overdevelop one or some competence/intelligence areas and leave one or other competence/intelligence areas underdeveloped.

I understand that the practice of mindfulness – the practice of acting from harmony of heart, mind, and body in every moment – provides human beings a moment-by-moment opportunity to be alert and alive, and slowly develops the human brain’s neuro-pathways for sustainable shift from unconsciousness and habit to awareness and choice.  Without individual and community awakening and mindful, intentional practice toward integration, human suffering can only become increasingly more severe and destructive.  The resulting negative impact of this on other beings, the planet and universe, is an unsustainable equation in which human beings are only a tiny fraction.

My Values

• Love
• Compassion
• Self-awareness
• Self-responsibility
• Integrity
• Right Action
• Lifelong Learning
• Mindful Leadership
• Universal Oneness

My Strategy

• Igoe Connect – “Mindful Leadership”  is my Signature Consultation Service directed toward Businesses and their Leader Development process – Executive and Management Teams, and Divisional, High Potential and Cohort Groups.
• Igoe Coach – Professional Integral Coaching for Leadership in Career and Everyday Life Coaching for both Individuals and Groups
• Igoe Walk – Facilitation of both public and privately sponsored group Labyrinth Events (mindfulness meditation walk)
• Igoe Practice – Consultative Practices including Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Enneagram Personality Typing System and Yoga Philosophies

About Kathy

Below is a highlight of my life’s journey, culminating in my chosen path for vocation in Mindful Leadership and my professional business, Integral Life Designs LLC.

My early awareness of my single-parent mother as “different” (diagnosed schizophrenic/bi-polar) combined with her visible suffering and unhealthy parenting skills midwifed my insatiable desire to understand human nature, a curiosity to learn how to reduce the suffering of others, and thereby my own.

The lack of parental guidance afforded me the opportunity to direct my own future.  Growing up on the limited resources of welfare, food stamps, commodities and community social services planted seeds of gratitude and generosity, and meant I had to be creative and resourceful in how I attained what I needed and wanted (unfortunately, not always in good ways).  Fortunately, early trial and error decision making quickly tuned my intuition and action.

Living my childhood “with Mom” in the “Projects” (named for the government subsidized housing project) and my teenage years in an upper-class suburb “with Dad,” gave me exposure to a diverse group of people by race, religion, class and culture, which expanded and enriched my belief system and my capacities for love and compassion.

By the time I was a young adult, I had learned that relationships were critical in assisting me to do, have and be what I needed or wanted.  I understood that for critical life decision points, it was imperative to seek out others feedback, and then weigh their input against my own intuition for the answer.

Achievement of my first significant life goal, graduating from university with an undergraduate degree having worked to pay my way through, affirmed my ability to achieve any goal I set.

Surrender to love and the partnership of marriage set the stage for life lessons of collaboration and compromise, loosening of material attachment and awakening of unconditional love.

Sleepiness induced by pursuit and enjoyment of material success allowed mid-life life challenges and stresses to build, ultimately triggering unhealed childhood wounds.  I became constricted, which limited access to inner wisdom, projecting my lack of resourcefulness into my world, responding day-to-day from survival mode with poor coping skills.  This was a life phase of stagnation of personal development, self-sabotage, and development of chronic health concerns.

A family-relationship crisis triggered a level of emotional trauma within me I had never experienced.  I recognized I needed help, so I sought therapeutic assistance.  I was able to come to grips with a new reality of my family-relationship situation, reduced my suffering sufficiently to where I could end the therapy relationship.

Within a few years later, I felt my 20 year professional career had “peaked.”  I felt the reality of my work-life as being unhappy, unfulfilled and over-stressed.  A fortunate experience with a professional business & life coach opens me mind, body and spirit such that upon research and selective sampling, I discover a deep resonance with the profession of professional life coaching.  I commit myself fully to a year-long intensive coach training program.  Not only did I learn the way of being a coach, but I learned how to use coaching principles with myself.  It was an experience that changed my life forever.

My experience of coaching others during my coach training program affirms it as a life calling for me so much so that before graduating from coach training, and then achieving certification, I make plans to build my own professional coaching business and gave notice to my employer.

During my coach training, a friend encouraged me to experience a prairie-grass labyrinth walk.  I discovered the power of the labyrinth as a walking meditative tool; spiritual awareness organically develops when one walks the path.   Again, I recognized a deep resonance or calling, and attended labyrinth facilitation training and committed myself to offering facilitated labyrinth walks as a part of my business.

Immediately following graduation from my coach training program, I am determined to immerse myself in a community of individuals on a similar professional and personal path as myself, joined my local coaching association.  I quickly learned active participation in my coaching community served to accelerate my personal and professional development, and I committed to service as a leader.  I served on committees, was nominated to the Board and then as President, and presently serve as immediate past president.

A few years ago, a critical health condition provided me opportunity to slow down and make a full life assessment.  I was forced to wrestle with, and subsequently came to an acceptance of, physical mortality and a knowing of spiritual immortality.  This being new territory for me, I consciously opted to work with guides – professionals of psycho-spiritual healing and development – to assist me as I traverse the labyrinth of the inward or “pilgrims” path.

My service as a leader in my coaching community these past four years, and in particular as President last year, concurrent with the development of my psycho-spiritual-somatic practices, I find myself more and more embodying the way of a servant leader.  I am using the “inward path” to achieve fulfilling work and inspirational leadership.  It is from this awakening and the culmination of my life’s experience that I have created a signature program for business leaders to embody servant leadership.